The Lawless Decade

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The Lawless Decade

• Prohibition, Gangsters and the Glorification of
  Crime in the 1920s

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Prohibition

• Championed by the Anti-Saloon League and the
  Womens Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
• Many states pass anti-drinking laws in
  Progressive Era
• Wilson bans beer production to conserve grain for
  war effort

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Prohibition

• 18th Amendment, ratified 1919
• Banned manufacture and sale of intoxicating
  liquors
• Volstead Act
• Banned anything with more than 0.5 alcohol

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Enforcement

• Very lax
• Government never spent money to hire more agents
• Spent only 5 million when 300 million needed
• Led to underground economy
• Speakeasies
• Gangsters

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Per Capita Consumption of Alcohol, 1910-29
Source Clark Warburton, The Economic Results of
Prohibition (New York Columbia University Press,
1932), pp. 23-26, 72.
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Al Capone

• Chicago gangster
• Wealth made in alcohol and prostitution
• Active in Chicago politics
• No one would testify against him

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Al Capones Free Lunch Restaurant During
Depression
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Leopold Loeb, 1924

• Two teenagers kidnap and kill 14 year old boy
• From wealthy families
• Thrill Killers
• Crime and trial a sensation
• Life sentences

Richard Loeb
Nathan Leopold
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St. Valentines Day Massacre

• February 14, 1929, Chicago
• Capones gang murders 7 from a rival gang -
  execution style
• Brutality of event leads feds to crack down on
  Capone
• Capone arrested in 1931

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Murder Rate, 1910-44
Source U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical
Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times
to 1970 (Washington Government Printing Office,
1975), part 1, p. 414.
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Prohibitions Demise

• Problems
• Not enforceable
• Rise in crime
• Loss of tax revenue
• People switch to harder liquor
• Blaine Act allowed 3.2 alcohol beer (1933)
• 21st Amendment repeals Prohibition (1933)

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Crime Continues to Captivate

• 1930s
• Public Enemy Era
• Bonnie Clyde
• John Dillinger
• Ma Barker
• All met glorious (and bloody) ends

Bonnie Parker Clyde Barrow